


Statue Garden

by MXXNTAEIL



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Hongjoong is a villager, M/M, Seonghwa is sort of Medusa, Seonghwa lives in a palace on the hill, Unspecified Point In Time, but not really, idk who else is gonna show up, i’ll change the tags when they show up, statue, they’re pretty cute together, village, villagers, what is hongjoong?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 09:44:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20387689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MXXNTAEIL/pseuds/MXXNTAEIL
Summary: It’s lonely at the palace. After the first few decades he grew tired of wandering. Nothing has changed, the locals don’t know him anymore, the statues’ stories are fading from his mind, it’s dull.But when he meets Hongjoong... Why won’t the boy turn to stone?





	Statue Garden

**Author's Note:**

> shshshsh im working on the second part of November Rain so don’t worry. ive been wanting to write smth for ateez cause im on a spree of writing one thing for every fandom im in (astro might be next) and also i have not edited so please excuse any mistakes. thanks!

His only friends are the statues, and his family is too. The entire palace is full of the stone and marble creations, and he never wanted to leave. Leaving will have him ridiculed and torn apart by the public.

The public is unforgiving of those who differ, them being inhumane humans without a moral sense. They would try and tear him apart before they faced their inevitable demise. And if he left the palace, the village would overrun his home. He'd have no choice, then. They'd all become statues in his collection.

He doesn't particularly need any more statues. Many of the rooms in his palace are full. The courtyard is resembling that of a museum's dream. His garden, among the rows of stone and marble, has no room to grow flowers in beds anymore. And he glances down the first row closest to the garden gate one morning, coming to stare directly into the eyes of his father.

Painted across the stone features are a crestfallen expression and the familiar ache in his chest returns as though he had turned the statue just yesterday. His father's furrowed eyebrows, to the halted tear tracks half-way down his cheeks, his perfectly straight posture. All of it reminded him of the many years ago.

He still hears his father's words, although his voice is fading - he doesn't struggle to relive the emotion which coursed through him. The disbelief in his father's tone is evident._ "It is impossible! You cannot be like your mother. You were supposed to be normal." _

He gets roped into the memory, and it feels like yesterday, not a hundred years ago. He hears himself repeating the words he said that morning._ "I'm sorry, father. I'm sorry-" _The words catch in his throat as they always had.

_ "Sorry does not fix such a - a troublesome situation! Why, why must you be a monster?" _

He cries out again, face buried in his palms. Tears flowing rapidly, seeping through his fingers, falling to the glossy marble floor. The palace floor in his father’s study was so colorful. He can’t remember the last time he’s seen it for it’s covered completely by statues now.

_ “Father, I’m sorry. What - what can I do?” _

_ “What can you do? What can you do! You act as if you have any other option but to do what your mother did!” _

He didn’t want to do what his mother did, he didn’t want to sacrifice what his mother had. He wanted to revel in the beauty of the world, he was so captivated by nature. He wanted to see it all _ so badly _. 

_ “No! I don’t want to, father.” _

_ “Child, you have no place to disobey me. I want you to grow up in this world and find a woman to love. I don’t want you to halt the lives of others when you look at them.” _

_ “But - but father, I want to see the world.” _

His voice cracked and chipped, like the surface of the statue who has been standing as the centerpiece of the fountain for as long as he could remember. 

_ “The world doesn’t have to be seen, it can be lived in. You can hear the world, but to survive, you must not see it. You must grow old and used to sightlessness with a lover, not stay young without a purpose surrounded by statues.” _

_ “Father, I...” _ His voice trailed away into nothing and he makes a mistake he wonders whether he regrets. 

He glances up, tears clouding his vision. He blinks to let the tears cascade down, and finally, his eyes catch his father’s. 

He gasps as his father’s face turns from an irritating sadness to a softer expression. One which carries an understanding of the situation occurring. His father looks down at the stone hardening his legs into place and stares into his son’s eyes again.

The knot between his father’s brows untangle, and the elder man’s lips tighten into a line. The familiar expression of dejectedness molding his features is the one haunting his son for the years to pass.

Two tears escape the father’s cloudy eyes, masking any resentment he might have for his son who turned him to stone.

_ “Father!” _ The boy grabs at the stone, too slow to catch the fabric of his father’s suit.

The book in his father’s hands remains real, the outer cover leathery and real. It was his father’s favorite story, and it was clasped between his hands, thumbs pressing into the cover. 

And the boy remembers how light the leather used to be, a nice tan color. But it’s darkened, the process of patina was quick and unforgiving, to a dark brown. He’s tried to pry the book out of the stone hands, but he’d had no luck. The story was the last of its kind, forgotten to history, its name on the binding withered away a few decades ago. And the pages must be cemented together by now.

He takes a step back, head filled with cotton, and inhales until his chest aches. He held it for a second, gaze falling to his mother, and he felt breathless again. 

She was kneeled on the ground, a withered flower in her hand, moss growing over the used-to-be silk robe she wore. Her hair fell over her shoulders, reaching the ground and coiling, and he looked over the marble scars in her eyes.

He hears her voice, crystalline and soft. It’s engraved so deeply into his memory, so haunting and grave, _ “Please, son. Make it stop.” _

_ “But mother-“ _

“_It hurts,_” she had cried, the edges of his vision hazy as he lives in the elder recollection. He saw her skin, he saw the red stains, he saw the _ pain. “Look at me, I cannot live like this anymore.” _

_ “I - I can’t.” _

_ “You can, my son, please. Bring me the mirror!” _ Her desperation weighs heavy in his stomach, her pitch rising quickly, her suffering just waiting to stop. 

_ “Why? Why the mirror?” _

The mirror would stop it all, but he felt selfish to want her around just a little bit longer. He stalled around, he wanted to talk to her for just a little bit longer.

_ “The mirror will work, the mirror will turn me to stone, even with scarred eyes. Bring me the mirror, child,” _ her voice fell to a strained whisper. 

_ “Mother, I don’t want you to-“ _

_ “The mirror, my son! Just - just bring me my mirror or so help my crawl away from this hell. It is a death to one or death to many just because I want to look at the world.” _

_ “But mother!” _

_ “But nothing! Unless you can remove this curse of my bloodline, I do not want anything except my mirror.” _

He shivered, staring at the cracked mirror in her hand. A soft smile on her features, her last moments of happiness. He remembers watching her favorite silk robe (it was still stained from when she cut her eyes to stop turning people to stone. It felt as if she planned on turning to marble that day, so she dressed her best for her death.) harden to stone, her scarred eyes failing to find his.

It left something of a hole in his heart. He abruptly turned away from her statue, going down the next row of statues. And he slowed when he caught sight of a familiar bronze statue. 

His brother, and linked in his arm is his girlfriend of plaster.

The brother, he doesn’t remember how he turned to bronze. He vaguely remembers how the girlfriend turned to plaster, though.

He stands still, the blades of long, uncut grass tickled his lower calves and thinks to himself. He waits for voices or filter into his mind, for any bit of conversation to spark a memory. But there is nothing.

He’d forgotten his brother’s voice. 

Yet he doesn’t feel any different because he never really liked his brother. They rarely spoke, and when they did it was because they were arguing. He didn’t feel a hole in his heart, only a misplaced emotion.

He can only see the anger and surprise from a hundred years ago. The anger, it might have been from the day’s argument, he wished he could have remembered it. The surprise, he knows it was because he looked his older brother in the eyes for the first time - and he remembers that all too clearly.

_ “And you will be bronze,” _ he remembers saying after the stone hardened, still staring into the dark eyes of his brother. 

The stone changed unexpectedly, the stone crumbling and flaking away to reveal a shiny bronze. 

Changing the stone so unexpectedly had him scrambling around to statues of varying ages to see if he could turn them to other metals and materials. And he could.

He turned his mother and father to a matching statuary marble, the only statues with that kind of marble. Others usually shared the same plain white marble. 

And he turned his brother’s girlfriend into the plaster. It’s what his brother would have hated. 

He smiled slightly to himself, but it faltered when he turned to the girlfriend. She was so blindly in love with his brother, so much so she begged to be a statue with her boyfriend.

_ “Please, dear friend, turn me to stone.” _

_ “Why? You have your future already planned - why would you stop now?” _ He had been confused, she was a bright young woman. She was intelligent, beautiful enough to make flowers wither beneath her, but her only flaw was how hopelessly in love she was. What was it about his brother that made her devote her entire self to him? 

_ “I don’t have the one I love beside me, so I don’t find a reason to continue.” _

_ “You can find another-“ _

_ “I can’t.” _

_ “A better man-“ _

_ “I can’t!” _ She cried. Shrill. Desperate. She was the only other person who begged to be stone apart from his mother. 

And he granted her request. He didn’t have much room to decline. The only consequence was her family hating him, but he never liked them anyway.

She turned to stone with a smile, one of which is still burned into his memory. Her eyes were staring directly into his, they were pretty crescent moons, and he can feel them follow him after he passes the lovers every morning. 

He took one more glance at her smooth plaster surface. A stone weighed heavy in his stomach. He cleared his throat and brushed past them into the next row of statues. 

And he walked by his best friend from fifty years ago. He had accidentally looked him in the eye, and his friend hardened to stone. He turned him to white marble. The boy was stuck in the position with his arm balanced on his knee, chin resting in his hand, a mortified face growing across his features that never finished. His friend was in the middle of happy laughter and absolute terror. Eyes wide and scared, mouth wide and joyous.

Admittedly, it was one of the statues who hurt most to look at.

So he hurried by the cross-legged boy on the grass with vines growing across him. He saw a pewter statue. It was a family friend he didn’t know much about. The man was holding a leather workbag, tanned patina, and the contents of it were emptied over two hundred years ago. They were lost to history.

His mother had turned him to stone. 

He sighed, holding his breath after all his breath left him, he held it until his lungs ached. Then he inhaled again, breathing in until his lungs hurt. He exhaled, slowly and softly.

He walked into the next row of statues, their ages starting to show significantly. The worn stone and metal, scuffs and cracks everywhere. 

And he saw his eldest grandmother with so many greats it’s almost overwhelming. She sat in the back, still looking as young as she had been when she turned. 

Her only age showed in her crinkled eye corners, wrinkles showing in her hands clasped on her lap. Part of her face had fallen away, edges of her long dress eroded and left holed, but she still radiated beauty.

Her family surrounded her, or so he believes since he never heard the full story from his mother. Her name was Hwa-Young, a cursed beauty. The starting point of the stone gaze her mother heaved upon her at birth, she was damned by a God the mother worshipped. And around her was nameless faces he wished he knew, but there were no records of them. 

He thinks it’s her a thousand and five hundredth year in this garden, although he isn’t too sure. 

He turns away after a moment of admiration, and he feels her eyes follow him through the side gate to the garden. He walks swiftly, tall grass tickling his skin, following the dirt path to the palace. 

The palace door swung open, stale air filtering into his lungs, and he shut it behind him when he finished looking into the overgrown garden behind him. 

He wants to go down to the village, though it’s far too dangerous. So he resorts to the bread and salted butter and milk, saving his pork and beef for tomorrow night, and looked at the statue stuck on the couch. 

It is his childhood nanny forever stuck staring at the bookshelf. She was a well-informed woman although she hadn’t had formal education, and she had raised him and his brother from birth. 

His second mother, a kind smile on her face even when her eyes betrayed her realization and sadness for being turned into a statue. She was also turned to white marble. He smiled softly at her, remembering her fading voice. 

He didn’t want to forget her.

Although it was a struggle, he hadn’t forgotten her. Her aroma of flower petals and vanilla was hard to forget, her voice gentle and smooth like honey. 

He sighed, the stone in his stomach feeling heavier than before, and ate in quiet. 

The palace was quiet, and the days blurred together. Sometimes he would talk to the statues and write down what they would say. If he forgot the name to the person, he would make one up and give them a personality. 

Every day felt like a repeat, but it was mostly just the mornings. Walking around the overgrown garden with a stray cat trailing him every once in awhile grew tiring fairly quickly. He would bring bread and cheese and fish for the sickly thin cats. It always guaranteed their return, and he hoped to see them again soon.

It was lonely at the palace. He’d read every book from every library in the rooms, he’d taught himself the history in old records. He’d read tattered cookbooks with withering pages and fading words, and he knows every painting and every crack in the wall of every hallway. 

All of the mirrors are shattered or painted over or thrown away. Everything that could potentially be a reflective surface is too dusty or dirty. He lives in peace, unbothered and unworried for anything. 

He lives alone at the palace, with stone friends and family. He doesn’t want any more statues to stand in his garden. He never wanted to leave it all behind. 

Right here, he sits in his wooden chair with a book he’s read a million times. He can recite all the pages without mistake without having to even think the slightest of it, but he still likes to pretend he’s never read it before just to get excited all over again.

Right now, he’s content.

To the locals down the hill and into the village, he’s known as the _ Undead Boy _, because he stopped aging quite a while ago when he aged to eighteen. Although he should be more than dead, he’s been alive for over a hundred years. 

To the locals down the hill and into the village, the palace is known as a name he can only guess to be _ Statue Garden _ . Their language has changed so much, he can’t decipher it at all anymore. He’s lucky _ Undead Boy _ remained mostly the same. 

And to the locals, he doesn’t have a name. But he does, it hurts that they don’t remember it since they had worshipped it long ago to not become stone. 

His name, although lost to time, not recorded in any living records, is Seonghwa. 

And Seonghwa sits at his wooden chair, a book between his hands when there is a knock at the palace door.

**Author's Note:**

> this might be updated sometime in the next week to month it just depends on my schedule who knows anymore. thank you for reading and hopefully you enjoyed it :)


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